Employees Making Bad Decisions

A couple of situations in Orange County that have left their employers looking bad.  First from the fast food industry:

A Chick-fil-A restaurant in Irvine has fired a cashier who typed the names "Ching" and "Chong" onto the receipts of two Asian customers – an affront that has flashed through the blogosphere in recent days.

The company quickly issued a media statement distancing itself from the "inappropriate and unthinking behavior" of its employee. The woman, identified only as Lia on the undated receipts, was immediately dismissed, according to the statement.

Of course, some people who are already mad at Chick-fil-A because of their pro-Christian stance are trying to make this case an indictment of the whole company, and that's just silly. Every company can end up with a dumb employee, especially at the minimum wage end of the employment spectrum.

The other case is that of an overzealous security guard who has just created all kinds of liability for the cellphone store where he was working:

A deputy shot a suspect Tuesday morning after the man fled from the scene of an armed robbery at a cellphone store, officials said.

The masked suspect was chased down by witnesses who saw him exiting the store and an armed security guard, authorities said, who borrowed the car of a witness to follow the suspected robber that was fleeing on foot.

The chase led witnesses and an on-duty sheriff's investigator to a residential neighborhood just a few blocks from the store, officials said, where the security guard crashed the borrowed vehicle into a parked car, said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. An investigator who responded to the scene shot the suspect at least twice, he said.

I'm pretty sure that nowhere in that guard's training did they suggest it would be appropriate to borrow someone else's car and chase after robbery suspects. Although you can applaud his commitment to the task at hand, his judgment is questionable and he created all kinds of liability for his store. I'm guessing he won't be there much longer.